I remember as a 14 year old boy seeing the ads of the truck smashing through a sign and thinking WOW, I have to see WHITE LINE FEVER! My fever has passed.....
Watching this 1975 box office hit now is fun in a retro way, especially since it was filmed in Arizona and is like a time capsule of what Tucson and Phoenix looked like so many years ago. It's fun in that it's predictable in every bit of its story and delivers all the right moments you expect. It's kind of fun to see how they managed to film a 90 minute movie on what must have been a $750K budget. This is a very cheap looking flick. LOTS of wood paneling....
It's less fun to scratch your head and wonder how Jan Michael Vincent became one of the biggest stars of the 70's, this boy couldn't act.
A solid cast of supporting character actors, including Slim Pickens, LQ Jones and RG Armstrong make up the assorted bad guys who want to make life hard for any independent truckers.
One of their harshest moves is sending JMV with a load of bad avocados from Phoenix to Salt Lake City with a 30 hour deadline. Whew, bad avocados.....those bastards.
By the time Vincent's character Carrol Jo Hummer (insert your own joke here) drives his big ol rig through a big ol sign in front of the bad guys office, you'll be wondering why this one act apparently has the effect it does, but what the hell.....if yer lookin for a movie where country music plays over a bunch of gold ol boys beatin the tarnation out of each other and lots of trucks go real fast and shoot at each other, maybe you'll get the fever too!
I'll give the several (pre-GCI) live action scenes kudos and say they earn this one a D.
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